continued..................

FLUORIDIOTS GAIN POLITICAL MOMENTUM

Fluoridation gathered momentum, supported by the billions that could be made from selling a toxic waste to city water providers and the untold billions behind the arms manufacturers outfitting the world with nuclear weapons. Gradually, the AMA and the ADA, began to soften their views toward fluoridation, until they had made a complete 180-degree shift in their opinion, as cited above.

In 1951 a huge pep rally was held for all the state dental directors. The focus was not to present research pro and con on fluoridation, but rather, how to get the public to accept the policy from above, the new religion of fluoridation.
(4th Annual Conference, 1951)

By 1952, the American Dental Association had turned completely, publishing the articles of radical fluoridiot Frank Bull in the JADA. Bull's whole focus was disinformation; avoiding confrontation with actual studies. As the B in BS, Bull put the propaganda theories of Bernays into actual practice.

Next, Procter and Gamble scored big when they got the ADA to endorse fluoride in toothpaste. Any dentists who spoke out against this ADA decision were censured, lost grant funding, or were thrown out of the ADA. (Fluoride the Aging Factor, p147)

By 1960 the alliance was formed: ALCOA, the US Public Health Service, the Federal Security Administration, the American Dental Association, and Procter&Gamble. It was like all the decades of research showing fluoride as a poison had never existed. Anyone bringing it up was subject to attack and persecution on any level possible.

DOESN'T THE AMERICAN DENTAL ASSOCIATION KNOW THE TRUTH?

You bet it does. Many articles in their main journals, JADA and the Journal of Dental Research , have proven for years that fluoride causes dental fluorosis. (JADA, vol 96 p78 (1978); vol.80, p777(1970) and JDR, vol.17, p.393 (1938); vol 67 p318 ( 1988); vol 96 p1158, (1978), to cite just a few from Fluoride The Aging Factor.

But despite all the pertinent studies and years of research, the American Dental Association is formally in favor of fluoridation! This position has never changed since its 1979 White Paper on Fluoridation. Politics eclipses science, as we see in excerpts like this:

"…opponents of fluoridation are uninformed or misinformed" or "self-styled experts whose qualifications for speaking out on such a scientific issue as fluoridation were practically non-existent or whose motivations are self-serving.."

or the amazing "… individual dentists must be convinced that they need not be familiar with scientific reports on fluoridation…"

or the ever-present non-sequitur "…what kind of mentality would reject the opinion of those who are qualified by education, training, experience…." and blah, blah, woof woof..

or the old stand-by "…numerous studies have shown…" although none are ever named.

or the Orwellian "…the advice of behavioral scientists should be sought with regard to realistic, convincing rebuttals…"

Rebuttals? This isn't a high school debate. What about presenting research?

Always remember - the ADA is a trade union, a lobby whose main purpose is furthering the economic advancement of the dental profession. It doesn't represent dental health. And in many cases the ADA doesn't represent the dentists themselves. This is especially true in the class action suit filed by some 40 dentists against the ADA in a DC Superior Court. The charges? Ethical breach of the public trust for recommending fluoridation while failing to inform its members and the public of the widespread available literature proving toxicity. (Foulkes)

The American Dental Association has a website which is a masterpiece of disinformation: www.ada.org. At the beginning of the Fluoridation Questions section, we find the standard fluoridiot disinformation posture in which natural fluoride compounds that exist in many places in nature are presented as the same fluoride which is added to municipal water. This is unmitigated, deliberate, fraudulent misrepresentation. The fluoride added to water is a toxic industrial byproduct in a form nature could never have come up with. Once you realize this simple fact, you will be able to see the rest of the Website Whitewash in its proper light. While you are reading the sections of this website, just remember that the ADA is a trade lobby, whose mission is to assure people of the safety and efficacy of a drug that is not safe and not effective, so that the interests of its fellow trade lobbies from the chemical industry are best served. The ADA is a mouthpiece for a huge constituency. Their website is the modern manifestation of Edward L. Bernays program of disinformation and crowd control, carrying the dogma of Cox, Dean, and Bull into the 21st century

Dr Y gives a good summary of the liaison between the US Public Health Service and the American Dental Association, and their control by salaried employees of the aluminum and phosphate industries, in his Chapter 17. It's the predictable unholy alliance between big money, lobbyists, and government agencies who determine policies. Just a quick glance:

THE EPA AND THE ADA SELL OUT

In 1974, Congress passed the Safe Drinking Water Act. Political forces cited in the above paragraph caused safe fluoride levels to be set by the EPA at 1.4 to 2.4 PPM! This is after decades of research showing all the above diseases could be caused by less than 1 PPM.

The American Dental Association's reaction to these new levels? With no new research whatsoever, the ADA began pressuring the EPA to raise the maximum level to 8 PPM! Their reasoning? For the past 20 years the ADA had been using 1 PPM as the recommended level. Now they didn't like the idea of the EPA doubling the ADA's old recommendation without consulting them. The ADA wanted to be in control, no matter what the effect on the public health.

The ADA was immediately backed by the entire Fluoridiot Underworld, because higher levels meant the polluting industries could sell even more toxic fluoride wastes to municipal water suppliers.

Note that the entire controversy for setting the levels of toxicity for fluoride in US drinking water was not based at all on science, but entirely on politics. The EPA was maneuvered into contracting a "new study" of fluoride toxicity to a research group called ICAIR Life Systems in 1985. Dr. Y cites a few of ICAIR's "findings":


-"dental fluorosis was not an adverse health effect"

-"teeth with fluorosis are desirable"

-skeletal fluorosis has not been found below 4 PPM

-there is no data on fluoride and genetic damage

-there is no data on fluoride as a carcinogen

Fluoride The Aging Factor, p159

This is the kind of shenanigans tax dollars are spent on: lies and disregard for decades of important scientific research. But the waste of time and money is secondary to the real issue: these lower primates are endangering public health for their own political advantage and power tripping. Big news flash, right?

The result of all the hearings, fraudulent reports, and maneuvering was that in 1989 the EPA tried to raise the maximum allowable level of fluoride to 4 PPM ! (Yiamouyiannis, p 161)

Today, the recommended level remains at 1 - 1.2 PPM, with the maximum allowable level set at 4 PPM by the EPA.

Now check this out: 4 parts per million is 4000 parts per billion, right, math wizards? OK. 4000 parts per billion of fluoride are allowed in drinking water, according to the EPA. Compare that with the allowable levels of Arsenic, Lead, and Mercury:

MAXIMUM CONTAMINANT LEVEL ALLOWED IN U.S. DRINKING WATER:

ARSENIC _______ 50 PARTS PER BILLION
LEAD___________15 PARTS PER BILLION
FLUORIDE _____4000 PARTS PER BILLION

source: EPA National Primary Drinking Water Standards ( July 1987)

Remember this citation: "Fluoride is more poisonous than lead, and just less poisonous than arsenic."
- Clinical Toxicology of Commercial Products - 1984

What's wrong with this picture?

DELAYED REACTION

As California Medical Association president Dr. Alesen points out, concentration in parts per million sidesteps the issue, regarding something that accumulates in the body year after year. The EPA is comparing fluorine to vitamins, for which there are minimum daily requirements. But vitamins are completely used up in a day or less. They don't accumulate. In addition, setting an arbitrary level of 1 PPM fluoride in the drinking water provides for a wide variation in toxicity: some people drink half a glass of water per day, while others drink two liters. This idea is a very big deal when you're talking about something that never goes away in the body.

"It is obvious that the important factor is not the concentration of the fluoride in the water supply, but the total amount consumed."
- Alesen, p.6

That is why fluoride poisoning can be disguised - diseases like skeletal fluorosis may take 25 or 30 years to appear, since accumulation of fluoride in the bones is slow and gradual. (Shortt)

WHAT DO THE REAL EXPERTS SAY?

"When historians come to write about this period, they will single out [fluoridation] as the single biggest mistake in public policy that we've ever had."
- Paul Connett, PhD, Biochemistry

"Water fluoridation is the single largest case of scientific fraud, promoted by the government, supported by taxpayer dollars, aided and abetted by the ADA and the AMA, in the history of the planet."
- David Kennedy, DDS President International Academy of Oral Medicine and Toxicology

"Sodium fluoride is a registered rat poison and roach poison. It has been a protected pollutant for a very long time."
- William Hirzy, PhD President of the Union of Professional Employees of the EPA

"sodium fluoride is a very toxic chemical, acting as an enzyme poison, direct irritant and calcium inactivator….It reacts with growing tooth enamel and with bones to produce irreversible damage."
- Granville Knight, MD president of the American Academy of Nutrition
Congressional Record, 31 July 56 (Robotry, p. 22)

"I am appalled at the prospect of using water as a vehicle for drugs. Fluoride is a corrosive poison that will produce serious effects on a long range basis. Any attempt to use water this way is deplorable."
- Charles Gordon Heyd, MD, president, AMA

"no physician in his right mind would hand to his patient a bottled filled with a dangerous drug with instructions to take as much or as little of it as he wished… And yet, the Public Health Service is engaged upon a widespread propaganda program to insist that communities do exactly that…The purpose of administering fluoride is not to render the water supply pure and potable but to contaminate it with a dangerous, toxic drug for the purpose of administering mass medication to the consumer, without regard to age or physical condition."
- L. Alesen, MD, president of the California Medical Association
Robotry, p14

"Fluoridation is the greatest fraud that has ever been perpetrated and it has been perpetrated on more people than any other fraud has."
- Albert Schatz, PhD Nobel Laureate for discovering streptomycin
quoted in Sutton's Fluoridation:The Greatest Fraud

"More people have died in the last 30 years from cancer connected with fluoridation than all the military deaths in the entire history of the United States."
- Dean Burk, PhD National Cancer Institute--Fluoridation:A Burning Controversy

"Fluoridation is the greatest case of scientific fraud of this century, if not of all time."
- EPA scientist, Dr. Robert Carton (Downey, 2 May 99)

Why do we never hear any of this????

IT ISN'T JUST THE WATER

Adding fluoride to the drinking water causes bioaccumulation in our cells, year after year. If fluoride is in the water, it's everywhere:

-growing vegetables and fruit
-washing vegetables and fruit
-in the meat of animals who have drunk fluoridated water
-in toothpaste
-in canned foods
-in processed foods
-in soft drinks
-in beer


A 1998 laboratory analysis done at Sequoia Analytical Labs in California showed very high concentrations of fluoride in the following foods:

- Dole pineapple, canned
- Snapple
- Coke Classic
- Hansen's soda
- Minute Maid orange juice
- Gerber strawberry juice for babies
- Amstel Lite beer
- Rice Dream
- Sunny Delight orange drink
- Pepsi

Another analysis done in 1998 by Jupiter Environmental Labs in Florida showed similar findings:

food..................fluoride in PPM (parts per million)

Gerber White Grape juice____ 3.5
Gatorade_________________________.44
Diet Coke_______________________1.12
Lipton Ice Tea___________________.58
Sprite___________________________.73
Hawaiian Punch___________________.85

Last one for now. A study in the Journal of Clinical Pediatric Dentistry:

food ----------------fluoride in PPM (parts per million)

Welch's 100% Grape juice_____2.6
Ocean Spray Cranapple________1.8
Hi-C Apple-grape_____________1.16
Minute Maid Grape____________1.25
Minute Maid White Grape______3.0
Gerber's White Grape_________6.8

And it's not just the juices: Froot Loops cereal was found to have 2.1 ppm by Expert Chemical Analysis of San Diego.

These are just a few examples of fluoride levels in some common grocery store items consumed by most Americans. The point is that there's an notable fluoride content in many, if not the majority of processed foods in our refrigerators and pantries. That's not mentioning our fruits and vegetables, even if they're 'organic' but grown with city water. We're taking in a ton of fluoride from ubiquitous sources. It accumulates over the years in our collagen, bones, and teeth.

BACKS DOWN

In 1973, British Columbia was considering mandatory fluoridation. They gave the job of researching and reporting the topic to Richard Foulkes, MD. Foulkes then wrote a 2000 page report and recommended that legislation begin to make fluoride mandatory in Canada. Based on that work, Canada began to fluoridate.

Then something happened. Little by little, Foulkes found out that the statistics that his researchers had based their findings on were largely falsified. It took Foulkes years to run down the truth, but by 1992, he shocked the country by backing down from his original recommendation:

"I now hold a different view. …the fluoridation of community water supplies can no longer be held to be either safe or effective in the reduction of dental caries….Therefore, the practice should be abandoned."
- Foulkes, 1992

Foulkes is not some tree-hugger from Santa Cruz. He is one of Canada's top scientific researchers. Many areas of Canada listened and stopped fluoridating. Want to read a first-hand story about lies and greed and disregard for human health and crooked deals between government and industry? Read Dr. Foulkes stuff.

Another pro-fluoride Canadian scientist, Dr. Hardy Limeback, changed his tune when he learned that 30-65% of Canadian children now have visible signs of overexposure to fluoride: dental fluorosis. Limeback:

"Children under three should never use fluoridated toothpaste. Or drink fluoridated water."
- Toronto Star Michael Downey interview with Limeback

Such research also prompted the Canadian Dental Association in 1992 to keep fluoride supplements from children of three and under. But attacking fluoride supplement pills is just a smokescreen to protect fluoridation of drinking water. Most research has found all the above ill effects at concentrations even less than the standard 1 PPM that is in most city water. It's not the supplements that are killing us; it's the fluoridated water.

FLUORIDATION IN OTHER COUNTRIES

If fluoridation is as safe and effective as the American Dental Association says it is, why don't other countries do it?

The U.S. is nowhere near the top of any health list which compares other countries of the world, as we saw in Chapter One. So what are the healthy countries doing?

If fluoride is so great, why have the following countries either never fluoridated or else stopped when they found out how bad it was?:

West Germany
The Netherlands
France
Belgium
Finland
Sweden
Norway
Denmark
Japan
Italy
Scotland

- Smith, G.
- Foulkes (1992)

Only about 2% of the population of Europe is subjected to fluoridated water.
- Yiamouyiannis, p.208
 

LOCKED IN

Three reasons why we're so far down the road of toxic fluoridation, it's hard to come back:

1. To reverse the policy of fluoridation now would be for the ADA, the EPA, the FDA,    and the USPHS, Congress, and all the municipal water polluters in the US to admit that they made a mistake. Not a good move for re-election.

2. To criticize fluoridation as a policy would challenge the billions of tons of fluoride being released into the air and water by the nuclear, aluminum, phosphate, steel, glass, cement, and petrochemical industries.

3. If fluoridation stopped, a multi-million dollar gravy train of research grants, propaganda contracts, and sweetheart arrangements between government and industry would vaporize overnight.
 

FREUD AND THE SLIME FACTOR

It may not be a good idea to blind ourselves to the presence of cold-blooded 24-karat Evil as it exists in the world today. But it's not like some madman in a James Bond movie with terminal acne, dressed in a metallic suit, speaking terrible English from his office in a hollowed-out volcano somewhere, threatening to destroy the world. No, no. These guys are polite and well-groomed, and have impeccable credentials. More like Al Pacino where he's the devil in that movie with Keanu Reeves - very likable, well-traveled, appreciates a fine wine, knows when to say that one perfect remark to make things work…Or even Billy Crystal where he's the devil in that Woody Allen movie - very charming and confident. These are not people to be confronted and defeated. No, these individuals advance. Their expertise is in how to get on, pageantry, presentation.

Beneath them, are the ones who do the work. Dr. Y chronicles a group of low-level bureaucrats and opinion makers whose unsupported, semi-literate propaganda gets constant media play. Propaganda can't be brilliant, and doesn't have to be true or make sense. It just has to be simple and be repeated over and over every day. These same pretenders and "social scientists" are coincidentally the stable of "experts" who are continually given extensive media space to criticize anything alternative or holistic that threatens organized medicine. Doctors of the evening. Flaccid guns for hire. Their tactics are low-level and powerful, according to the Bernays formula:

- conduct no research

- avoid the real issues when possible

- never engage in any debate where actual research data will be used

- attack the opponent, not the issue

- don't try to instruct, or lead through a process of step-by-step education

- persuade; do not inform

- use emotional phrases to distract people from the real issues

- when confronted, change the subject

- cover up the real studies; never refer to them

- pretend there is some favorable research by using phrases like "Numerous studies have shown…" or "Research has proven..." or "Scientific investigators have found…." but then never cite anything

- always harp on the "superior education and training" of the fluoridation people, pretending that the most educated doctors and professionals favor fluoridation, even though Dr Y thoroughly proves that most of the propaganda has been written by non-science people, generally with public relations or mass-psychology backgrounds

- keep repeating unfounded falsehoods about the safety and effectiveness of proven poisons

- remind people how many decades fluoridation has been going on

- favor mandatory fluoridation legislation, removing all opportunity for free discussion when possible

- try to keep all opposing evidence from being seen or considered by any policy-making agency

- omit pertinent data from actual studies

- Above all, never stop repeating the same falsehoods, over and over.

Like him or not, we must respect Freud's grasp of the human mind and what motivates it. Freud is the father of psychoanalysis, and even though that profession has largely fallen by the wayside, diluted by a thousand social servants, his original principles have found a home: the media. Shaping mass opinion in the "proper" mold - the PC lemmings can be guided to practically any cliff the controllers can dream up.
 

REALITY CHECK

Most people have no opportunity to have the facts of the issues presented to them, because of the virtual blackout of information in the media. That's why all this seems so odd. With the help of the colossal disinformation machine in operation, according to the American Dental Association probably about 62% of the drinking water in the U.S. is fluoridated. (www.ada.org) But some courts have shown the other side of the picture, and beginning to see through the standard shell-games of the pro-fluoridationists.

In a famous legal battle over fluoridation in the 1950s we find the judge letting us have it:

 "By [fluoridating the water] the municipal authorities...arrogate to themselves the sole right to decide what medicine is good for the health of the water consumers, and thereby the municipal water system becomes a direct conduit for the transportation of medicine from the apothecary's pestle to the patient, without the latter's consent. Thus will the people be deprived of a very important part of their constitutional liberty under our republican form of government and the police state will be substituted for the police power of the state."
- Justice Donworth in KAUL vs. CITY OF CHEHALIS
from Robotry, p 18

Two decades later a Pennsylvania Supreme Court judge made a meticulous review of all available research, both pro and con, before entering his 1979 injunction against fluoridation. His Honor was less than impressed with the wit of the fluoridationists:

"The proponents of fluoridation do nothing more than try to impugn the objectivity of those who oppose fluoridation."
- Judge John Flaherty
Pennsylvania Supreme Court

Judge Flaherty wrote a letter to the Mayor of Auckland, New Zealand stating:

"…In my view the evidence is quite convincing that the addition of sodium fluoride to the public water supply at one part per million is extremely deleterious to the human body, and…there is no convincing evidence to the contrary."
- The Arthritis Trust, 1994

THE LEGAL NOVELTY OF FLUORIDATION

Fluoridation is a totally new idea, from a Constitutional point of view. It's nothing like adding chlorine. Although chlorine has toxic side effects, it actually does something beneficial to the water - chlorine purifies the water. Fluoride does no such thing. Fluoride is a drug, a medication that supposedly has beneficial effects for a small percentage of the population.

"The purpose of administering fluoride is not to render the water supply pure and potable but to contaminate it with a dangerous toxic drug for the purpose of administering mass medication to the consumer without regard to age or physical condition."
- Alesen, p 16

In other words, without consent. And giving drugs without consent is in direct violation of international codes of war behavior, like Nuremberg and the Geneva Accords. Commenting on the famous KAUL case above, Judge Hamley had this to say:

"What future proposals may be made to treat noncontagious disease by adding ingredients to our water supply, or food or air, only time will tell. When that day arrives, those who treasure their personal liberty will look in vain for a constitutional safeguard. The answer will be : 'You gave the Constitution away in the Kaul case."
- Robotry, p. 18

CONVERSATION STOPPER

Want to stop a fluoridation advocate in his tracks? Ask him to cite exact legitimate studies that prove fluoridation prevents tooth decay. Then find them. Besides the few bogus political documents by Dean and Cox, cited above, there aren't any. Fluoride research is a huge area. The fact that most studies have been almost completely suppressed for the past 50 years mars many illusions about the democratic process.

If people want fluoride in their drinking water, let them buy supplements. Fluoridation of municipal water has nothing to do with health. It's just politics.

A THOUSAND LITTLE BATTLES

The fluoridation battle is being waged back and forth in the individual cities and towns across America. Many districts have never fluoridated. Many others have recently decided to begin fluoridation. Still another group of 63 cities, since 1900, which had fluoridated for a long time, have voted to stop. (Jones) It's an ongoing struggle, with million of dollars of fluoridiot funding available for presentations, flyers, and media ads in any community where the issue is coming up for a vote. If fluoridation is defeated this year, it may appear on the ballot again the following year if the city is on the Priority Schedule.

California's Priority Schedule is a list of 167 communities in California which are now being targeted by the formidable alliance of fluoridation interests. (Table 64434-A) Doesn't look like they'll run out of cash any time in this life: support comes from the slush funds and lobbyists of the mega industrial polluters who wish to maintain the public water works as their private sewer. They want to keep this 50-year gravy train rolling, and the best way to do that is marketing and promotion. Here are the Top Ten of the 1999 Priority Schedule in California:

- Helix Water District
- Ventura, CA
- Daly City, CA
- Escondido, CA
- Santa Maria CA
- Fair Oaks Water District
- Manhattan Beach, CA
- Sweetwater Authority
- Santa Barbara, CA
- El Dorado Irrigation District

It floors you to realize the immense amount of scientific research and legal opinion proving the toxicity of fluoride since the 1930s, that has been ignored and suppressed. Why did all those people do all that work? With every new city that places fluoridation on the ballot, all the old arguments are dragged out, as if it's from scratch every time, without the benefit of input from all the other hundreds of communities that have gone through this same battle. Divide and conquer - worked for the Romans.

Antifluoridationist information programs are often privately funded grassroots little organizations, but their influence is being felt across the nation. With the rise of the Internet, it is getting harder to keep people from learning the real effects about fluoride. For these reasons, clean water is very slowing making progress against the totalitarian forces of mass medications. But the struggle never ends.

OTHER CONTAMINANTS

Chlorine and fluoride are added on purpose to the water. We haven't even mentioned the millions of tons of industrial pollutants that sneak into the earth's water supply every year. To give just one small example, Congress did a study in 1979 of the extent of industrial pollution between 1950 and 1970. They verified just a part of what was actually dumped into America's water supply: the top 14% of industrial polluters discharged 1.5 trillion pounds of industrial wastes into the water supply in that 20 year period.

What about the other 86%?

Think it's improved since 1970? Consider this:

The only federal agency for ensuring clean drinking water is the EPA. In 1997, after the cryptosporidium deaths in Milwaukee and Las Vegas, Clinton tried to upgrade the provisions of the 1986 Safe Drinking Water Act. But the EPA only regulates some 60 chemicals—there are thousands of chemical pollutants in the water! And the states are individually claiming that complying with the restrictions on just those 60 are "too expensive" because they just don't have the money. Most water systems are operating on very old designs with inadequate capacity. (Kupua A'o, p16)

As a result, in 1991-1992 alone, the EPA reported over 250,000 violations of the Safe Drinking Water Act, affecting more than 100 million Americans. (Natural Resources Defense Council) For those 250,000 violations, guess on how many the EPA took enforcement action. Just guess. About 600.

Looks like we're on our own out here.

HOW CAN WE GET PURE, CLEAN WATER?

The tap water in this country seems to have a few problems:

- organochlorines
- fluoride
- PCBs
- THMs
- heavy metals
- resistant biologicals

You'd think that since we created the problem, we could fix it. But even if Greenpeace or someone took over the government of the world tomorrow and stopped all further pollution tonnage, it would be years, decades before the water would be like it was before the Industrial Revolution. These contaminants will be around for centuries. By now everyone knows what the concept of half-life means. Different data sources, different time frames, but one thing is certain: the water cannot be cleaned up in our lifetime, no matter what is done. Writing a sentence like that is a shocker. Where is my ninja team?

So what can we do?

Don't drink the tap water for starters. But does that also mean don't wash vegetables, make ice cubes, or cook with tap water? Yes, it does, because heat doesn't destroy fluoride, heavy metals, or other contaminants. Remember the word bioaccumulative.

So the first step is

BOTTLED WATER

That's right - drag it home from the market every week. Or the 5-gallon bottle from the water store. Is that safe enough? Maybe. Who knows? You have to trust two groups of people in order to be sure:

- the regulating agencies
- the sellers

Water stores sell reverse osmosis water - no minerals. Bottled water is only as good as the monitoring system in place. Step right up.

FILTERS

"Buy a filter or be a filter." That's one company's slogan.

Today there is enough grassroots consciousness about the dangers of tap water that cheap carbon filters are now available in any hardware store which attach easily to the kitchen faucet. It is likely that such filters get rid of most of the chlorine - for awhile. But to really get the resistant biologicals, the fluoride, heavy metals, and other contaminants, the customer may consider one of the high-end drinking water filters. These cost between two and four hundred dollars and come in models for both over and under the sink.

Names like Alpine, MultiPure, and Spectrapure are among the dozens of brand names that have come along during the past 20 years. Multipure seems to be out front at this time. Everyone claims to be the best, of course, but we can find some important similarities in their advertising. When you begin to compare the better water filters, you notice common concerns:

chlorine
THMs
chloriform
chloramines
cryptosporidium and giardia lamblia cysts
fluoride
pesticides and toxic chemicals
heavy metals
minerals
MTBEs
nitrates

Killing microbials is not a big deal since most of that's been done by chlorine. Most contaminants are removed by the better filters. The problem when choosing a filter seems to come down to four main concerns: fluoride, minerals, THMs, and nitrates. Difficult to find one filter that does everything: many reverse osmosis filters take out fluoride, but also the healthy minerals. Many of the high-end carbon filters will not remove fluoride or nitrates, but leave the healthy minerals.

Fluoride is obviously a biggie. Find out if the filter you are about to buy removes fluoride, and what percentage. After what we've learned about fluoride, we should expect a filter to remove it, wouldn't you say? Problem is: the demand. Due to fluoridiot propaganda, most Americans don't even realize fluoride is bad, and therefore don't think about it when considering a water filter.

NSF is a third-party non-profit testing agency that has been rating water filters for the past 50 years. Always ask - is it NSF-certified? For what? Don't be fooled if they say 'NSF-tested.' Big difference.

Minerals is an area of some controversy. You've got the hard water / soft water debate. Hard water has more minerals in it, which obviously is better for the bones and teeth, and probably for the heart as well. That makes sense, although as we saw in the Minerals chapter, elemental minerals are the least absorbed of all types. Elemental means from rocks, and that's the kind that would be in spring water, and therefore in filtered water, except for reverse osmosis. In my opinion, hard water is better than distilled.

Most naturopaths and holistic nutritionists don't like distilled water because they say it leaches minerals from the bones and teeth. In general, that seems logical, although Dr. Y says it doesn't make any difference unless the person is extremely malnourished. The truth is, no formal studies comparing distilled with mineral water have been done, so it's all pretty theoretical. But thinking about the Hunzas and their 120-year lifespan that was attributed to the glacial mineral waters they drank, one can see the value of minerals in drinking water. A high-end water filter should take this discussion into consideration and give reasons about the importance or unimportance of filtering out certain minerals.

Comes down to a choice: reverse osmosis or carbon block. With reverse osmosis you've got no fluoride filtration, no minerals, and wasting about 4-9 gallons to get one gallon of pure water. (A'o, p72) With high-end carbon mesh filters, you can get rid of everything but fluoride, and you'll still have minerals.

These are questions for the filter sales force. Make 'em dance for you. Caveat emptor - only 5 states have any regulations about what water filter manufacturers can say. On the Internet - it's a total jungle!

There is one excellent little book which can save a lot of research time: Don't Drink the Water. The author goes into great detail in comparing the attributes and quality of the basic filter units. He points out the advantages of placing a KDF filter before the carbon filter in order to insure that bacteria won't begin to grow within the carbon.

THE REST OF THE ICEBERG

Sorry if this chapter has been Information Overload. The materials cited really only scratch the surface of the research that has been done in these areas. The purpose of the chapter has been to acquaint the reader with some of the basic issues in regard to drinking water, issues which are systematically hidden from the media, for obvious reasons. Prove them wrong, if you can; just don't pretend like these problems don't exist. When you read something that proclaims the purity of tap water or the importance of fluoride, maybe now you will notice how studies are claimed but never cited. Look behind what you read and try to see the persuasive tactics of Freud's nephew. Appreciate the mastery of an art.

The physiological importance of hydration has really been glossed over by doctors and nutritionists, not on purpose, but simply because it's not taught. The ideas of Dr. Batmanghelidj must be confronted - either he's right or else there's a major gap in our health information.

It's unfortunate that the sludge of politics has to be hauled into a discussion of water purity. But once you discover how and why our water got this way, the political influences are like an elephant in the living room - pretty hard to ignore. Not exactly hot news; politics has been controlling science ever since they locked Galileo in that high-rise jail for discovering the earth went around the sun. Which is why you shouldn't expect much support if you try to discuss or substantiate what you've just learned in this chapter. Lemmings know what lemmings are told.

The rest of the iceberg is left to you. This chapter is just the briefest glimpse of the top part. With a little follow-up, perhaps you won't make the same mistake the captain of the Titanic made: thinking that there's nothing in the water that can hurt you.


copyright 2000 NewWest

shiloh777777@yahoo.com

 

REFERENCES


Batmandjeld, F MD The Body's Many Cries for Water 1994
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